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DayBreaks for 1/28/2019:Neon Promises

From the DayBreaks archive, dated 1/26/2009:

From Ovi’s World of the Bizarre, December 4, 1997: “A bizarre incident occurred when Paul Sirks was trying to get his plane going, after it quit on landing. Sirks was trying to crank the propeller when the plane took off without a pilot. It reached 12,000 feet and flew around for two hours. It finally ran out of gas and crashed in a bean field northwest of Columbus.”

Galen’s Thoughts: I wish I’d seen Mr. Sirks chasing the plane after it started and it took off without him. Can you see him running after it? Can you imagine the phone call he must have made to the control tower?!

Fortunately, although the plane was destroyed, no one was hurt. But consider:

FIRST: Life can operate on autopilot. We can go from day to day, not paying much attention to the details of life, and just “letting it happen”. Life will oblige us, for a while – until all of a sudden it comes crashing down for lack of neglect to the things that are important. It may be a teen who crashes for lack of parental involvement, a marriage that founders because of lack of effort and time, a job that is lost because of laziness and refusal to learn and grow. It is dangerous to fly on autopilot – life can fly that way for a while, but it’s not the best way. Consider the advice given in Proverbs 6:6-11, that encourages us to think about life carefully so we aren’t “poverty stricken”: Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest– and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man. Remember – there is more than one kind of poverty, and the most tragic poverty of all is the poverty of the soul.

SECOND: I’m sure we’ve all seen movies where the pilot of an airplane is killed or dies from a heart attack and someone on board the plane has to do some heroic flying (even though they’ve never been trained). Sometimes it has a happy ending – sometimes not. It is at a moment like that when you really appreciate having a pilot that knows what he’s doing – who has been trained to do the job and do it right. Who is the pilot of your life? Are you trying to fly solo? Some of the time?

Part of the job of the shepherd is to guide and direct the sheep – to make sure they get safely where they are supposed to go. Jesus knows the way – he knows how to really “fly” – and he will give you wings (1 Thes. 4:17: After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.)

Now that’s how to fly!!!

Prayer: Give us the wisdom, Lord, to look deeply and honestly into our lives to consider our ways. May we yield control of our lives into Your great and Almighty hands. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

DayBreaks for 2/01/18: A Lamp, Not a Searchlight

From the DayBreaks archives, January 2008:

Psalm 119.105: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

Have you ever gone backpacking? I have rather poor eyesight without my contact lenses, and at night when we are backpacking and I take my lenses out, I want to be sure that I don’t have to do any walking around or I can’t see a thing! It can be awkward to be tripping and stumbling over unseen roots and rocks (not to mention it doesn’t impress my friends with my sheer athletic gracefulness)!!!

This verse from Psalm 119 is trying to tell us that we don’t have to walk in the darkness. But it is important to remember what a lamp was in the days the passage was written. Typically, the lamp being described was a small earthenware bowl with an elongated snout on one end into which a wick was laid. One end ran into the bowl and the other lay on the outer edge of the “snout” and was lit. It could usually fit easily into the hand. Travelers carried these lamps at night so that they could see the terrain where they were walking.

It’s worth noting that the Word is described as being a “lamp”, not a high-powered searchlight. The lamp of olden days gave light to the feet, but couldn’t give light for a great distance. That’s the way it is with God – He gives us just enough to see the next couple of steps but not the complete pathway. Why? I think it is because if we had a high powered searchlight, we wouldn’t need faith, for then we would be walking by sight and not by faith. God wants us to learn to trust Him with a future that is unknown (to us).

Are you trying to direct your own steps? Sometimes we can try to hard to plan the future and we rob ourselves of the excitement and joy of being led step by step. Our planning tends to remove God and dependence on Him from our minds. We must approach all of life with the attitude noted in James 4.13-15: “So you should say, ‘If the Lord wants, we will live and do this or that.'” How often in the course of planning your day, let alone your week, month, year or life, do you stop to take God’s sovereignty into account?

Living day by day, depending on Him alone, is a tremendous adventure. Don’t try to find the searchlight – be content with the lamp and trust that He truly knows the path.

PRAYER: Give us the wisdom to seek Your light and the courage to walk in Your pathway! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths. 12 When you walk, your steps will not be hampered; when you run, you will not stumble. – Proverbs 4:11-12

Have you ever intentionally set out to walk in a straight line? For some reason, human beings struggle to do it. There’s just something about our orientation that causes us to walk in a crooked or warped way. That’s the conclusion of Robert Krulwich, a science correspondent for NPR. In an interview on Morning Edition, Krulwich noted a study done by one Souman, a scientist from Germany, who blindfolded his subjects and then asked them to walk for an hour in a straight line. Without exception, people couldn’t do it. Of course everybody thinks they’re walking in a straight line, until they remove the blindfolds and sees their crooked path. I don’t know why it is, but we can’t do it. Perhaps it’s because something is wrong with our sense of balance, or because one side of our body is slightly stronger than the other and we push off harder with that foot, causing us to go slightly crooked with each step.

Krulwich observed, “This tendency has been studied now for at least a century. We animated field tests from the 1920s, so you can literally see what happens to men who are blindfolded and told to walk across a field in a straight line, or swim across a lake in a straight line …, and they couldn’t. In the animation, you see them going in these strange loop-de-loops in either direction. Apparently, there’s a profound inability in humans to [walk] straight.”

This has obvious parallels to our spiritual ability to walk in a straight line, too. But here’s the really interesting part: according to the research, the only one way we can walk in a straight line is not by focusing on our feet, but by focusing on something ahead of us – a building, landmark, or mountain. As long as we can keep our eyes on something ahead of us, we can make ourselves avoid our normal crooked course. Kurlwich conclusion is simply that, “Without external cues, there’s apparently something in us that makes us turn [from a straight path].” – Steve Inskeep, “Mystery: Why We Can’t Walk Straight?” NPR: Morning Edition (11-22-10)

We don’t have that great of vision to allow us to see where our footsteps, as crooked as they are, will lead us. Whenever we trust in our own vision to arrive at a destination (holiness, goodness, righteousness, etc.), we will go wrong. That’s why God said in our verse today that “I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths.” Only God has that kind of vision to see the goal. We must let Him guide and lead us. Left to our own, we’ll only walk in circles!

PRAYER: Lead us in straight paths, O Lord, and guide us in the way that is everlasting! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

COPYRIGHT 2011, Galen C. Dalrymple ><}}}”>

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